


this is not a place of honor

by gwenhyneargwenhyfar



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:20:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23956777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwenhyneargwenhyfar/pseuds/gwenhyneargwenhyfar
Summary: ex·tinc·tion/ikˈstiNG(k)SH(ə)n/nounthe state or process of a species, family, or larger group being or becoming extinct.in which adelard dekker does not die.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 27





	this is not a place of honor

**Author's Note:**

> first posted tma fic eyyy

The Extinction is the culmination of every fear. 

Others may overlap, yes, the Buried bleeding into the Vast bleeding into the Lonely and on and on and on, like a color wheel where every shade is a manifestation of the monsters that have been under humanity’s collective bed since time immemorial.

The Extinction, however--What Comes After, That Which Makes Obsolete, You Are Not The Last? 

It  _ is _ every fear.

It is the finality of the End, the brutality of the Slaughter, the sheer--for lack of a better word--desolation of the Desolation; it is the unchangeable eternity of the Buried, the infinite depth of the Vast, the terrible familiar not-familiar of the Stranger.

It is the never-knowable sightlessness of the Dark, the inevitability of the Web, the wrongness of the Spiral, the creeping deadliness of the Corruption, the mangled apotheosis of the Flesh, the helplessness of the Lonely.

Most relevant to the topic at hand, it is the assessing omniscience of the Eye.

This connection, however tenuous, gives it full view as Adelard Dekker devotes his life to stopping it.

He obsesses, searches, fixates, his devotion rivaling that of a Hunter’s by the time his luck finally runs as dry as the kindling his body became. Dekker delves far, far, far, far too deep; it is only one final bit of good fortune that the thing that had been delving back is not the thing that ended him for good.

Well.

Not _quite_ for good.

As the ruins of Klanxbüll smolder around him and the last bits of life flee his failing brain, the Extinction reaches out.

The fifteenth fear rebuilds Dekker, refines him, trim away all the little inefficiencies of the human body, gives him a form he could have never imagined in his wildest fever dreams.

Now, like any sane person, his first reaction to finding himself awake in that shell of the final power, no longer able to call himself human, is panic.

But Adelard is nothing if not collected and resourceful, and he quickly finds a silver lining. 

Being the Extinction’s avatar does not grant it his loyalty.

He fights it for more than seven years, sabotaging its manifestations, undermining its plans at every turn. Dekker does his work just as well as he did in his first life. 

(The life he could never call one, not when there was this, he does not let himself think.)

Adelard knows he’s fading, sees the writing on the wall. He fights it as long and as hard as he can, but when Magnus’ ritual succeeds and the Entities tear through the thin veneer of hope and ignorance that had had the audacity to call itself  _ reality _ ?

He cannot silence the grim beauty he finds in it; in the twisted forms of the Inheritors, in the ash-and-slag-and- _fear_ wreckage of a world once so grand and inefficient, of every station spewing numbers out into the radioactive dark, of the Panopticon towering above it all.  


Maybe this is better, Dekker does not bother to stop himself thinking. Better than humanity could ever be.

(Some final shred of humanity deep inside him, one last little imperfection, screams at this.)

While the old Adelard would not have hesitated for a second to bring his life to a close to save the world, he would no longer do so.

After all, why die to accomplish something that had already been done so very  _ beautifully? _

**Author's Note:**

> catch me on tumblr @gwenhyneargwenhyfar
> 
> inspired by a post i can't find from the lovely @bfglesbian


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